The plan involves moving five current sworn officers –– one who is working as a recruiter and four who are working as dispatchers –– back to patrol duty, and hiring five civilians to take their places in those roles. It would also add 10 officers to work on the streets.

The change in the recruiter position has already been proposed in Ireton’s fiscal year 2015 budget.

Ireton said Maj. David Meienschein found $277,000 in savings across the police department that Ireton’s and Duncan’s proposal suggests be used for the change in the dispatcher positions. A budget amendment proposal would put $832,822 toward hiring the 10 additional officers.

Those budget transfer and budget amendment proposals are to be heard by the Salisbury City Council on May 1, Ireton said.

There are currently 92 sworn police officers in a city where the population grows to 160,000 or so during the day –– not enough, Duncan said.

In 2013, the city of Salisbury saw its lowest number of Part One crimes in at least 10 years, but that has crept up for the year-to-date 2014 numbers. There were 478 Part One crimes through the end of March this year, compared to 429 in 2013, according to Salisbury Police Department statistics.

“We can’t reverse the progress that we’ve been making over the last four to five years,” Duncan said Monday.

Duncan said the additional officers will be focused in these areas: Downtown Salisbury; the north end commercial district –– where there is currently new residential construction; and the Church Street, Doverdale, Johnson’s Lake and North Camden neighborhoods.

The plan also includes decreasing the amount of police after six years, after work has been implemented to make neighborhoods more stable.

In addition to Salisbury police and city officials, Wicomico County State’s Attorney Matt Maciarello and Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis were also at the announcement.

As someone whose office gets every case that comes through for prosecution, Maciarello described the police officers as currently being “overextended.”

Now, with police going from call to call, there isn’t time for them to make relationships with the public, he said. And adding officers will make residents more safe, he added.

“I think that this is a tremendous day for Salisbury,” Maciarello said.

vjunkin@dmg.gannett.com

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Budget breakdown

The budget amendment proposal from Mayor Jim Ireton and Police Chief Barbara Duncan calls for a total of $832,822 to be spent on police officers.